St Albans

For a hundred years a traveller's rest on the main road from Sydney to the Hunter Valley, was the village of St Albans; offering hospitality to those who come to enjoy the tranquility, sense of history, and natural beauty of the Macdonald Valley and Yengo National Park.

Lying within a two-hour radius of Sydney, Newcastle and the Central Coast, the village and valley make a rewarding and readily accessible destination for a day trip, a weekend stay, a stopover on the way to or from the Hunter Valley.

The "town" of St Albans was officially gazetted in 1841, on land which had previously been a stockyard and bullock wharf at the head of navigation on the Macdonald River.

Built in that decade the Settlers Arms Inn, a two-storey sandstone hotel, has been the hub of the village for locals and travellers for 150 years.

The flood of 1889, which rose to the verandah eaves of the Inn, led to the building in the 1890s of the sandstone courthouse on the opposite hillside well above that level, contemporary with the building of the simple sandstone church of Saint Alban on the hill behind the Inn.